The Surrender That Happens When the Ego Finally Cracks – Sandy B.

Thank you, Chris. Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy Beach, and I'm an alcoholic. Chris and Christine have just meant the world to me. And I know I seem like I just love people and I do all that, but I would think I may be one of the biggest loners in Alcoholics Anonymous, even in sobriety. And Chris and Christine have just been everything as far as a support system through surgeries and these freaking health things that keep showing up and deaths in my family and all kinds of things. and you just can't have anything better than a friend. We didn't know what friends were back when we were drinking. Friends were people you took advantage of. And we thought we were friends at the bar. You remember, this is my dear friend. And he goes to the bathroom, we steal his money off the bar. But we don't feel bad because we know he'd do that to us, and that's what friends were all about. So I'm delighted to be here, and I also want to add my thanks to all the tapers in AA that go around to these various conventions. If you ever watch them setting up and operating and being there the whole time, and I know a lot of the speakers in the front here, they get to see them around the country. And they really are collecting tremendous AA history because we can listen to Bill Wilson giving many, many different talks. I know at this little history meeting that we have, a brand new guy volunteered to be the one to do some research and come in with a little history project. And they talked for 10 or 12 minutes. And he came in and he had, what are these, iPods or these little portable things? And he said, what I brought tonight is Bill Wilson talking after Dr. Bob died. And this is a little excerpt from it. And he plays it right there in the meeting. And there was a couple of new people who were almost in tears. And after the meeting, they said, I never thought I'd get to hear Bill Wilson's voice. They had no idea that it was available. And, God, we can listen to Chuck and I still listen a lot to Clint and some of the people we've lost, Scott Redman. we really did, we were very close and these are preserved and I'm very grateful to the tapers in the AA for doing this and for making it available I seem to be thanking people here tonight I guess this is long overdue all throughout my sobriety I've made fun of the state of California. And it started back in the 60s. When I got sober, number one, you didn't hold hands saying the Lord's Prayer. You didn't yell back at the speaker, Hi Joe. And you didnít read anything at the beginning of the meeting except the preamble. So the speaker got up and he went, well, here's the preamble. Oh, and the serenity prayer. And then, here is Joe. And it was two and a half minutes. We were into the meeting. And then I'm at a meeting one night and some guy next to me grabs my hand during the Lord's Prayer. And I said, what is this all about? And I saw other people and they said, this is how they do it in California. And it started there and it swept all the way. And so I finally, I'm going, all right, jeez. Then I get up to talk one night and somebody says, yells back, hi, Sandy. And I'm gone, what's that? And that's what they do out in California. We're starting to do that now. and then somebody came in reading chapter 5 and I'm looking at my watch and I am going when the hell is the meeting going to start they are reading all the steps and all this stuff and then they are read in the long form of the traditions so one time Clancy was coming to DC and we never pulled this off but I wish we had we were going to fake a meeting and bring him to it and we were going to read things until he broke. And, you know, we go through the normal thing and it's also the custom at this group to read the chapter to the agnostic. So I've answered that one. and just see how long it would take before he said, what are you, we're going to read the whole meeting? I mean, what the hell is going on? So having done all that for all these years, I cannot tell you the contribution that California has made to Alcoholics Anonymous. I could start naming speakers and people out there that have influenced my life, starting with Chuck and Clancy and Clint. There's almost this whole front row that's just been some remarkable, remarkable people that have come out of that state. And I just want to thank all you guys and gals that have contributed so much to AA. And I didn't mean any of the teasing that I was doing. I got sober on December 7, 1964 up in Washington, D.C. And I'm one of those guys that just came to AA and decided to stay. As a matter of fact, I don't remember hearing slips. I didn't even know what the word meant. It seemed like almost everybody that came just stayed. And I guess I had about three months sobriety and somebody said, hey, Fred out in the Vienna group slipped. And I remember going, really? So later I had to ask him, what's a slip? He said he started drinking again. And I said, why? and he said I don't know he just started drinking so I went to my sponsor and I said what's this slip thing you didn't tell me about that and he says well you're not allowed to have one and so I thought it was handed out when you came in to AA no, no, yes you can have one and you can't you can so anytime I thought about taking the drink I said well I just can't I'm not eligible to have a slip. So I just got one white chip and stuck around. And if you're looking for a possible approach to sobriety, you might consider that one. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm saying that this is a fact, but along came the treatment centers and started teaching about relapse prevention. and you know you put that in somebody's head wow relapse could happen any second I better be ready and relapse became part of the sobriety well watch out for relapse they're all over the place I just remember there weren't many people doing that we could have been lower bottom I have no idea but it just seemed like all the guys I got sober with just stuck around I suppose A.A. up in D.C. was very similar to every place else it was a lot smaller than it is today I think the year before I came in all the meetings in Northern Virginia, Washington D.c. and Southern Maryland were on one mimeograph sheet and I saved my directory meetings from 1965 and I'm telling you it's really tiny There was probably about nine meetings a day in that whole area. So one of the things that that did was you had to drive a bit to get to the meetings. So there was a meeting in the car. Then there was an evening, and then there was another evening. And then there would be a meeting and there was meeting in a car coming home when you would talk to your sponsor and go, geez, that speaker was terrible, wasn't he? and my sponsor would say well what makes you think that and I would explain whatever it was and he'd go no the guy's absolutely right you're wrong this guy was that was exactly right and so I learned a lot about what I had heard and that's a very important thing to learn about what you heard in order to understand what you've heard you have to ask someone else because what you heard just consists of your perspective on it and after you run it by somebody else and hear their view on it, you go, well maybe your view is slightly improved over my view and that's called growth. It's how it's done. I was thinking of starting my story. One way to not get bored with your story is to start in different places. And I was thinking of starting my story in 1964 by simply saying, well, there I was. It was 1964. I'm 33 years old. I'm a Marine Corps fighter pilot. I grew up in Connecticut. I went to a prep school that's 350 years old and went to Yale University. I got married. I have six children and I am presently attending a career school at Quantico, Virginia to move up in the higher officer ranks of the United States Marine Corps. And I had a grand mal seizure and almost bit my tongue in half and they carried me out on the stretcher and I went up to the hospital and I was there for five or six days and I went into the delirium treatments, which terrified me. And they put me in a straitjacket, and they took me back into the nut ward, and I was in pain. And I went through detoxing, and it was the most painful thing I can remember. And it seemed to me that five or six days went by, and I came to in a bed with sides on it like a crib. and someone had wet the bed that I was in and it stunk and I was just so shaky and I looked around and there was two other guys in there in cribs and the door had no door handle on it and it had a little window and people would look in every so often and finally a corpsman came in and he gave us some cigarettes and I think just two or three matches and we all were chain smokers and I remember lighting a cigarette and I'm smoking and the guy over there is smoking but the guy in front of me the guy right over here is closer to me so that I could smoke until it was time for him to light a cigarette and then he could light it off of mine and then I'd have another cigarette ready because we had run out of matches and then I could light his cigarette off of my cigarette and then light mine knowing that when he finished I could like mine off of his but the guy over there just could watch us and after a while of watching him watch us I saw the look on his face and I had the thought there's a guy whose life is unmanageable over there that guy and I found somebody worse off than me that helped explain that what I was going through wasn't that important. Now, I could say that that's when I discovered I was an alcoholic by biting my tongue almost in half. And in a way, it was true. A lot of us, when we get to AA, is when we find out that we're an alcoholic. We don't really find out. We finally admit it to ourselves. And it's almost like you suddenly become an alcoholic. You just go, yeah, you're right. I am an alcoholic, wow. And I've been one for 25 years. And I just discovered it today. That's the nature of denial. You don't just say, yeah I became one today. you acknowledge the totality of your own story and you can see it without the denial and you could just see it from day one. I'm not one of those guys that drank socially and then crossed the line. I was born on the other side of the line I drank socially about 10 minutes and then boom! And I never had control. I had no idea what was going to happen when I drank. I remember hearing a guy one time, he bought a bottle of whiskey and he took it back the next day and he went back to the liquor store and he said, I don't want any more of that whiskey you sold me yesterday. What box did it come out of? And I got in a lot of trouble. He said, I bought some whiskey in here about a month ago And I drank it, and I didn't do anything wrong. My wife just appreciated me so much. I behaved myself entirely through the whole evening. And I want to know if you have any more of that available. In other words, when we picked up the first drink, it was, I wonder where I'm going. I wonder what's going to happen tonight. But it was worth it because we knew that something really was going to happen tonight. And it wasn't going to be, I sat there going, oh, nothing going on, nothing going on. So when people said, well, let's leave this bar and go to another bar, I'd go, why? Well, nothing's happening here. Let's have ten more drinks. It'll be happening, man. You don't have to leave at all. The cops will be here. There'll be shit going on. Just, you don't have to travel. Just drink more. And I think we had the idea that when we went to the next bar, it was better. It was just that we had to attend drinks over there. And so, I started drinking just like everybody who has already spoken. I didn't like the world. I didn'T like what was going on inside of me ever since I was a little kid. I just didn'T see it right. I just saw it as a very hard place. I never belonged. I had all the proper upbringing, wonderful parents, a wonderful sister. She's got 35 years in AA now. Wonderful woman, Sue. I went to church. I paid attention. I was, you know, head of the Connecticut Catholic Youth Organization. I have my picture in the paper. Look at this upstanding young man. But when I sat in church, I said, everybody else God likes, but he doesn't like me. Nobody told me that. I just sat there and figured it out. I just saw things differently. I heard the Latin, and I said, oh, they're talking behind my back. They're plotting on me. And my sister thought it was beautiful. And then they'd spray the incense and shake those things and come up and down in the robes and all that. And I just was like, man, I'm getting nervous just watching this whole thing because I knew what I was leading up to. It was leading up to the crucifixion, which if you look at it from where I looked at it, did not look like the coolest thing. And when I got out of it looking at that cross hanging, it was right there. You couldn't miss it. It was just there. It was, this is what I did to my only son that I loved. Guess what I'm going to do to you, little boy? Boom. Now, my sister saw the true meaning of all of that. And it made her just feel so loved. I saw it another way. So Clancy talks about alcoholism being a disease of perception. All life is a disease of perception. As a matter of fact, there isn't anything except perception. That's it. And that's why when we come in here, they change how we see things. And they do that by getting rid of the way we used to see things So anyway, I went... I had polio as a kid and it was a real scary thing, mostly for the parents because they just took all the kids and put them in isolation and even though some of the other kids were, you know some of them died and there was this going on I remember there was sort of a spirit in there that well we're all in this together and we're goofing around and doing things you're not supposed to and this wonderful nun named Sister Kenny came up with this treatment and about 20% really benefited from it so that I got this arm, I couldn't move at all and I got 90% of the use back and the same with the leg. And so when I came out of there, I remember the gratitude that I had for looking at flowers running around in the field because they'd been taken away for six or eight months And that was the first gratitude I ever felt. And, of course, the reason I felt it was, it was taken away. And then it was given back. And when it was taking away, I never knew I was going to see it again. That experience, of coarse, is repeated here in Alcoholics Anonymous when we're giving our lives back. It's hard for people who haven't experienced dramatic distress to really understand the gratitude that the people who come out of it feel. And that's what we all have in common. AA almost corners the market on miracles. You know what I mean? And I hear about them once in a while. In a church setting, there'll be someone who just is transformed. But in AA, it happens all the time. This room is just filled with one miracle after another. And you say, well, gee, how does AA corner the market on miracles? Have they got a program that is that much more powerful than churches and other spiritual things? No, they don't. What we do, we corner the market on desperate people. That's our sample. And when everyone in your congregation is desperate, you're going to hit a home run every now and then. You really are. Very briefly, I got out of college to join the Marine Corps. The Korean War draft was still going on. I really didn't know much about the military, although World War II was the biggest thing in my childhood because I was a teenager when a lot of it was going on and when it ended. So I had a very warm place in my heart for the military but I never thought of myself as becoming a military person. You goofed around too much. If you knew me, you'd go, this is the last guy that's going to join the military. But you were either going to joint or they were going to take you. And so four or five of us had some beer and said, let's join the Marine Corps. And I said, yeah, yeah. I'll be right there. I'll finish the beer and go down. Yeah, we'd love to join. Oh, I do. I do And, of course, it's a rude shock. The process for getting into the Marine Corps is similar to what my sponsor did to me when I was new in AA. But out of that process and people doing it together and surviving, for example flight school I think they plan on washing out something like 65% maybe 70 so you knew when you started that people were going to be dropping and then when you finish and you end up in a squadron you just feel like you are part of something and all these guys had the same thing in common and I just loved it so I decided I would make it a career and I signed up for a regular commission and got one. They weren't handing them out that much then, but I got one, and so now I'm assured to stay for 20 or 30 years. I had gotten married, and in eight years we had six children, three boys and three girls. I got transferred around to wonderful, interesting duty stations flying in fighter squadrons and photo squadrons. I was a forward air controller out of Camp Pendleton. I was the flight instructor. I mean, you just go through. It's just like, wow, this is really cool. And all the Marine bases, they got the golf courses, the officer's club, and a lot of them were on the water. You could have boats and just, you know, you'd look and you'd just go, isn't this wonderful? But that wasn't what was going on. What was going to happen was going on inside of me. And I wasn't enjoying this at all. I was starting to rely so much on alcohol that I had to lie all the time. I know I was supposed to come home. I told you I'd be home at 8 o'clock, but the guys wanted to hang around and I didn't want to disappoint them, so it's 2 a.m. and here I am again. And then the arguments would start and I could see the kids look, as the kids hate to watch their parents locked in mortal combat, yelling at each other and one of them storming out and all that. So I just, after you get sober you really get a chance to reenact that in your head. And sometimes your kids will be brutally honest with you and tell you what it really felt like. But the main thing that was happening was I couldn't control drinking. I was now forced to keep it in the car and to just lie about anything to make sure that I could keep on drinking. The one thing I didn't do was bring alcohol in the airplane. Which, as it turns out, my friend Hal Marley, who's passed away now, but he was my buddy when I first got sober, and he was an Air Force pilot. And I told him, I said, I started suffering from withdrawals in the plane. I would be shaking and all that. And he said, well, that's because you didn't bring any alcohol with you in the aeroplane. He said, I started into that, and I just took a little flask up, And he was describing how successful his plan for flying jet airplanes was. But as successful as it was, he also ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous and lost his Air Force career. Well, he didn't lose the whole career, but they made him leave. I almost jumped out of airplanes about five times. I thought I was going to have to eject because I couldn't stay in the seat. I couldnít stand how I felt. I had to leave. I donít know if youíve ever had that happen. I had it happen getting a haircut a couple of times. I just said, ìI have to leave now.î And the guy said, ñ Well, Iím not through. Yes, you are. I have to go now. I didnít have anywhere to go. I just couldnít stay there any longer. I had to leave. It was almost like I had to get out of my own skin. And this was happening as I was flying around. And eventually, I said to the commanding officer of my fighter squadron, photo squadron that I'm not going to fly anymore. And he said, what do you mean you're not going to fly? You've been flying for 14 years. It's your whole life. I said, I'm not going to fly anymore. And I wouldn't tell him why. And he said, well, if you insist on that, I'm going to have to contact headquarters Marine Corps and tell them to give you a new assignment. And I said okay. And I waited three months. It was an agonizing three months because I felt so ashamed with those other pilots. And I get my orders to air traffic control school. I'm going to become an air traffic controller so you can see there was no alcohol programs going on in the Navy at that time so that the proper place to send someone who's drinking so much he can't fly is to put him on the ground controlling airplanes and somehow I made it through the school in Glencoe, Georgia there's an old I don't know if they still do it up there but that was it and there was one guy there I'll never forget it it was and I wish I knew his name one of the things they did in the school was take the controllers up in an airplane that was being controlled by people in their class or the next class, so they could sit in the plane and hear the instructions and watch the plane follow the instructions and come down and land. And so I got put in this airplane that I had taught in as a flight instructor. And the guy who was flying the plane knew me, so when we finished it, he said, would you like to fly this thing again? And I went out and spent about 30 minutes just doing acrobatics and touch-and-go landings and all that. And then I said to the guy, I really appreciate that. And he said, glad to do it. I'd forgotten that story. I hadn't thought about that in many, many years, how grateful I was to that guy. It just felt so good. I finished that school, which is amazing because my hands were shaking so bad I could hardly hold those little strips. Back then they didn't have computers. You filled out the information on a little long piece of paper that fit in a metal strip and then you moved this thing around as the plane came down and all these things. You had to be very sharp, keep track of everything. So I got sent overseas to Iwakuni, Japan, to be in charge of an air traffic control unit. And by the time I got there, I was in much worse shape. I just could barely check in. And I went down to the unit, and I remember we had a gunnery sergeant who was the senior enlisted man, and he took a look at me, and he said, Captain, we're really glad to have you here. you just try to show up but don't go near the radar and I think we're going to have a good tour of duty over here. And he gave me a big wink and I went, right. So I never talked to an airplane while I was over there because I could have probably done something really bad. So I just was trying to survive the tour of duty. And now the drinking is getting, I'm drinking all the time. I'm just bringing it with me to work. It was just a very hard year. and when it came time to leave I had these orders to this career school I was talking about when I started this talk in Quantico, Virginia and I'm just going to end my drinking story by telling you about my leaving Japan and getting to Connecticut to get my family to go back out to Quantico, back down to Quantica. We were sent up to Yokohama to wait for an assignment to a plane out of Anita to fly back. And they said, now you have to stay in this BOQ. Don't leave because we could be coming in going, pack your bags and get in the bus. We're on the way. So don't be leaving. And I'm going, all right. Well, I need a drink. And a day went by and I said to the other guys, I'm just going to shoot over to the club. Surely there's time for one drink and I'll be right back. So I shot over to the club, had one drink, came back, no bus. I said, well, I can go over and have two drinks. So I went over on four or five nights, and I said... I bet you I could make it back into the city of Yokohama where I used to drink in the bars down there and say goodbye to everybody one more time. And the people were going, Sandy, if you do that, you know how serious it'll be if you miss... Oh, no, no. I'm just going down. I'm going to come right back. So I went down. I stayed about a half an hour and came right back. Still didn't miss the bus. So two nights later, I went down there and wasn't so lucky this time because I came to, I remember opening my eyes and it was, there was daylight. I could see light coming through the windows, but I didn't know where I was. I was in a room. It was like an octagonal room. Never had I come to in an octagon room before. I just looked all around, and it had curtains with Navy ship's wheels on it. Made me suspect that might be something to do with the Navy. And then I saw a ladder, a metal ladder that went down. So I went over and looked down there. I was at the main gate of the base in the officer of the day's bed and I had a note on my uniform when I looked in the mirror I saw the note and it was from a lieutenant JG and he said Captain Beach you're a disgrace to your uniform a taxi brought you back at three o'clock in the morning you fell out on the thing we had to pay the cab driver We carried you in here. You're absolutely incoherent. The bus has already left. Report to Admiral Brown when you wake up. I'm going, whoa, man, this is... So I got my act together as much as I could and I climbed down those things and the shore patrols down there, they love to give Marines a hard time. Good morning, Captain. How are you doing, sir? Good to see you. And I said, yeah, hi, Captain. And I asked, how long ago did the bus leave? And they said, oh, it left an hour ago. I went back to the place. I got my bags. I called a cab. I signed my own orders out of that base. I took a cab to Anita, hoping that I got there before they did. And I did. I got there before the bus did. I checked in, because I had the order signed. And they told me, take your bags over here. We need your passport. Now you come over here, let me see your shot chart. Bum, bum, bum. All done. You wait over there and we'll let you know when the plane's going to go. Now the bus arrives with my buddies. and they see me sitting there and I've already gotten a beer and I'm sitting there nursing the beer and I say, where have you guys been? Here's what you do. First you take your bags over there then you check in with this guy be sure you have your shop things and the passport I'll meet you back here and so boy I got away with it and I made an assumption that since I made the flight they probably wouldn't press the charges, and it was true. I never ever heard anything. So I'm just so thrilled, and we fly back to San Francisco, went to the Marine Memorial. The Marine Corps has a hotel in San Francisco. Called my wife back in Connecticut and said, I'm back, and I had a wad of cash. We got paid in cash then. I had the cash that was going to cover the airplane ticket Back to Connecticut, it was going to cover getting the family, driving down. It was the money that you get when you're being transferred. And I said, I'm going to go out to the airport tomorrow and I'm going to see what the flights are. And I'll call you from the airport, let you know when I'm flying into New York, you guys can come down. OK, OK. So I went out drinking to celebrate being back in the States. And I came to on a train pulling into Los Angeles with no money at all. I think I thought I was going to Camp Pendleton or something and I went down there. So I came out of the train station and I needed to get to the airport because I had to get to New York. And I was wearing my uniform, and back then sometimes people would cut you slack if you were wearing your uniform. And so I asked the cab driver if he could take me to the LAX. He said, sure. He said I was in the Marine Corps myself. Come on in. And I got in there and I came out to the airport and I knew what I had to do. I had to go up. Back then you could sign a counter check. This is how long ago this was, you forgot your checkbook. Could I fill out a check, put my bank in there? And they would go, yes, if you have proper identification. But in order to pull that off, I knew I needed four or five drinks. So I went in the bar and I sat around and some guy came up and said, can I buy a drink? Oh, I had Marine Corps. Yes, yes, yes. And so I'm sitting there drinking. He went to the bathroom. I poured his drink into mine, and I drank that down. Somebody else went to the bathroom, and I got a cup full of bucks from him, and then I bought. So finally I had four or five drinks. I went over to the airline. I said, I don't have a checkbook, but I have an account. I'm going to New Haven, Connecticut. Well, what's your bank? And it had to be a bank in New Haven because I was going to have to go cover the check by getting a special payment up in New London, the Navy base. This is all my planning of how to come home from overseas. And so I took a guess that every city has a second national bank. And I filled out, Second National Bank of New Haven, Connecticut. Got the plane ticket, get home, and I'm real nervous. And people are going, what's the matter? And I said, listen, is there a second National Bank of New Haven. And they said, yeah, it is. It's right there. Oh, good, good. I got to go up to New London and get a special pay. You can go to the military base if you have some story. You Can Get Sort of Advanced Pay or Something. So I got this money. It was probably $110 or something. I went to the Second National Bank of New Heaven, opened a checking account, and deposited $110 into the checking account so that it would cover the check. So that's how easy it is to come back from Japan to the United States. You just... Anyway, when I called Alcoholics Anonymous, another Marine captain came to my house. His name is Bill Terwilliger, and like Tommy, I had the same sponsor for 42 years. And it was a wonderful, it was just a wonderful relationship. He started me through a very painful process, which is they wanted to wrestle the management of my life away from me into his hands and the group's hands, and eventually into God's hands. Now, the most precious thing you have is control over your own life. You make the decisions about yourself, and they're implying that they want to make the decisions. And when I asked him why he thought that would be a good idea, he said, well, you still have a wristband from a nut ward on your hand and just guessing if anybody ran your life other than you, you'd probably be better off than if you keep running it. And so when I came to the third step and was balking at that, I don't know who God is and everything, he just said, why don't we turn your life over to whatever will take it? And so the point of the whole thing was we have to get it away from you. That's going to be ten steps forward right there. You. And I'm fighting all this. And he said, but wait, you're still in charge of something very important. Oh, and I said, good. What's that? You get to evaluate the results of other people making your decisions. And if you don't like them, we'll give it back to you. So I followed everything they were doing and everything kept getting better. and like I said during the workshop I didn't want to tell them I didn' t want to admit that they might be right that they were doing a better job than I was doing but the evidence became overwhelming that getting me out of the driver's seat was the secret and it was a very painful process And I don't know if I'm hearing things today, but there seems to be a lot of talk coming out of a city on an island up north of here that the newcomers today are more sensitive than we were. And their feelings get hurt a lot easier than ours did. and that we ought to become more understanding and kinder and gentler. I can't tell you my reaction to that because it wouldn't be polite. I do not know any way to puncture the human ego that isn't painful. And if we don't get in there and smash the pride and the ego, We're signing their death warrant. That's my feeling on that. I just... This is the end of my political speech. But if you try to be everything to all people, you have to abandon all your principles and you can stand for nothing. And we need to maintain Alcoholics Anonymous just the way it is. It is perfect. It's so simple. One problem, alcoholism. One solution, God. I mean, how simple can it get? And I am so thrilled to be part of this. I am most grateful for experiencing God. And when I sponsor people, I tell them, I personally will guarantee that you have a spiritual awakening if you do exactly what I tell you. And they say, gee, people ask me, well, how could you promise that? What do you mean? And I say, well I like this line. They will always materialize if you work for them. That's what I hang my hat on. And if you do the work, you're going to have this awareness. You're goingto suddenly realize that God is doing for you what you couldn't do for yourself. This realization is called a spiritual awakening. You experience it yourself. You're suddenly sitting there just going, these aren't a bunch of coincidences. This is that God they're all talking about. And when that happens, we realize why we were put here in the first place. And it was to have that experience. It was to come home again. It wasto come back from this terrible prodigal son journey that we've all been on until it got desperate. And I am so glad for all the desperate things that happened to me because the human ego does not crack open easily. And when it does, you talk about wanting the hand of AA to be there, that's the moment that it has to be there. And we call it when the mind is open. The mind is opened. For some unknown reason, my mind opened a little tiny bit and my sponsor said, come on, follow me. And I did. Come on, follow me and I did and based on that one surrender all the things good in my life have taken place. The beginning of the twelve and twelve, I think I mentioned this earlier. Who cares to admit complete defeat? Nobody. But the more complete our surrender, the more the victory will be. The more you will enjoy it, the more you will never go back out. This 100% surrender is the ticket. It sounds like that, gee whiz, that's hardly getting started. But there it is. They talk about if you've been sober four or five years and you're wondering what's wrong, maybe you didn't finish the first step. Maybe you almost gave up. Maybe you put up a white flag with a conditional flag over here on the side. I'm surrendering most, but I want to keep in charge of this. So those of you that are new tonight, that you came in and you feel like, God, this is a bottom. I'm down at the very bottom. That's it. That's the place to be. Oh, man. That'sthe only starting point for this wonderful journey is a bottom where you say this is it. And then you just have someone take your hand. You're through. You've done all your work. You did the job, man. You hung in there. You drove yourself. There are very strong, healthy non-alcoholics who couldn't possibly have kept up with what you did. You were drinking while you were bleeding. You were drinkin' while you was pukin'. People said, are you through yet? No! And you kept going and you kept goin'. You didn't realize where you were going. But you are on your way to surrender. You're on your way to the greatest turning point that takes place in a human being's life when they hold up their hand unconditionally and we say will you do whatever we say? And you say yes. And I am forever grateful to alcohol for breaking me. That's our friend out there. If alcohol weren't walking around the meetings out here, we might start having second thoughts about, well, I think what holds AA together is booze. That's what holds us together. It's always there and we know it. And we know that we can thumb our nose at it as long as we're holding God's hand. Ha ha, ha ha. It's like walking to school and the bullies are going to beat you up only you're with Arnold Schwarzenegger or something and you're going, hey guys, hey! Hi! Sorry! I'm not alone today. So when alcohol knocks on the door, you say, I'm sorry, I am not alone today. And he will go knock somewhere else. We have a lot of fun in AA. My friend Ernie Kurtz, I've got a few more minutes, I guess so. I think I talked about him earlier that he is our historian, one of the best historians. And he also gives workshops. He did an Akron workshop for AA archivists. You know, we have archivists who keep our state and he teaches them and, you know, talks about it. And in the course of one of his lectures, it's actually in one of His secondary books, they ask Him, now that you've studied AA, how long do you think it'll last? Which historians get asked that question. And he said, there's nothing that could touch AA. If anything's going to happen, it'll have to happen on the inside. It'll haveと happen because AA starts to lose its unity. It starts to divide and so on down. And so he said a real AA meeting. Somebody asked him what a real AA meeting was, and he said, well, I gave it some thought, and this is what I came up with. A real AA meaning has a membership. All of the members need to be there. They need to Be there. They're not there because somebody thought they ought to go there, and they're hanging around there. They know in their heart they desperately need to be there. That's a cool group, if everybody in the group desperately needs to be there. He said the second thing, they speak the language of the 12 steps. They talk of character defects. They talk, talk of surrender. They talk about the 12th step. They talk with meditation. They talk up the amend step. They talk about helping others. We just speak AA. We have our own language in here, and we don't dilute it. We don't bring in language from treatment. We don'T bring in langUAGE from other sources. We have OUR OWN way. We have alcoholism. We DON'T have alcohol addiction. Do you see the difference? We have Our Own vernacular in here. And that's why we're AA. Now, after the meeting, we'll all be glad to get into, well, this addiction and that addiction, and we can speak a different language. But while we're in the meeting we speak the language of AA. And, of course, we follow the 12 steps and we follow The Twelve Traditions. Another essential ingredient is laughter. you're in a group with no laughter that's not a real AA meeting it's just not a Real AA because laughter is so essential because we're laughing at our past we're loving ourselves we're looking at ourselves for the first time we've changed our whole perspective on life and the things we went through and when we make mistakes now we can laugh at them And just go, well, I'm a human being. I'll go make the amend and then I'll move on. And we share at that level. And then he went on to say, the worst AA meetings are near treatment centers and universities. And I won't comment on that. That was because I grew up in the university atmosphere and they have a different approach to looking at life. I guess the last thing I want to say to those of you that were really new here tonight, there's an energy in this room that is undeniable. If you were standing up here getting those big books and you looked out here, you saw that energy and that energy is very appealing it made you feel good it's like when you go out in the sun and you feel the sun's rays come in and you just know God I like it it just feels wonderful this energy is God that's what it is the grace of God God just permeates anyone who will allow it in. As I said earlier in the workshop, we have the power to prevent any of this from happening. And sometimes our pride doesn't want to be wrong. There's no such thing as God. AA isn't going to work for me. So you stand defiant and you prove your case. But nobody applauds. They're very sad because they know you came this close to the ultimate jackpot. So if you're new, don't ever resist this because you're going to miss out on the very reason you were born. So good luck to you and thank you all.